“... the pictures. The New York Times was among them, with one on the front page (but discreetly, in a corner, taking second place to the front and centre shot of the Queen Mary 2 arriving in New York harbour), and one inside. But before the Defense Department released its photos, the Seattle Times had published a photograph taken by two Maytag employees loading ...”

“... he thought would have this broad knowledge, and went on:I will give a copy of the manuscript to Paul Malliavin as editor of the Journal of Functional Analysis. But there is no certainty that he will consider the paper for publication over the next few months. Each of them will certainly say that it contains material relevant to his special interests. They ...”

“... across Ken Tynan on Fleet Street, hurrying towards the Evening Standard offices, then around the corner in Shoe Lane. I tagged along as he explained, between puffs, that there had been an unfortunate misprint in a piece he had written about Orson Welles. Luckily, he had spotted this in the first edition and now was on his way to ensure it was corrected for ...”

“... attendant pavement cafés had any idea where to find the conceptual art gallery around the next corner. The whole intimidating riverside development felt like a set of dubious quotations trying to live up to the catalogue. Has anybody actually swum in that Sky Pool of unnaturally shimmering water spanning the twin towers? Even residents such as Nadeem ...”

“... Lewis had an affair, came to the conclusion that ‘on the whole, he was half a SHIT,’ while Paul Nash told Lewis that his character was ‘strangely sub-human’. His bellicosity towards those reckless enough to be generous towards him was even fiercer: when a cheque from his patron Fanny Wadsworth didn’t turn up promptly, she received a postcard that ...”

“... a good example of where ‘environmental sensitivity reinforces national advantage.’ The fourth corner of the diamond is the position of related industries. One industry produces demand for others. A cluster of related industries makes for a stronger base than one that exists in isolation. Japan’s strength in semiconductors helps it in computers. Swedish ...”

“... or ‘beautiful new hat’ would win his interest. But it was mainly her literary friendship with Paul Bourget, and her beginnings as an author, with The Greater Inclination (1899) and The Valley of Decision (1902), that achieved this aim. ‘The explanation, of course, was that in that interval I had found myself’: Edith Wharton’s first ...”

“... their politics militant. I claim this to be the first piece about the salience of Scargill, though Paul Routledge of the Times had, it turned out, done a decent report on the election results as they occurred. In a few months such claims were moot. Scargill led a mass picket of miners to the Saltley coke depot outside Birmingham, recruited the support of the ...”

“... and desolation in the countryside and a swelling mountain of festering litter at every street corner. They saw the end, even for the most renewable resources. One of these was Robert Lamb, who in 1979 published a book called World without Tree. ‘A survey of current evidence,’ he wrote, ‘shows that trees could be so scarce in a mere thirty ...”

“... of the trip, in letters which contained gothic descriptions of his hand-to-mouth existence. To Paul Semonin, probably his closest friend, he wrote of an eight-day river journey through Colombia: The crew is primitive and vicious-looking and the captain is an old river toad who can’t understand why I’m here and doesn’t much care for it. His daughter ...”

“... and I was pulling pints for everyone, loving being the centre of attention. George sat in the corner observing it all. I was putting brandy in my Guinness which was the only way I drank spirits really. It says much for Adams’s resolve and basic physical strength that he was able to play so often so successfully. But it is still surprising, given that ...”

“... Keith and Mick. Like brothers. Like evil sisters in disguise. A two-headed beast. The opposite of Paul and John. The dark and the light. I’ve always been pulled toward darkness. Toward black. Toward death. Toward the South. Good. Now I’m heading the right direction. Away from the quaint North. Away from lobsters and white churches and Civil War graveyards ...”

“... who coined the phrase ‘romantic irony’ for the artistic apprehension of human duality; John Paul Richter, who invented the term ‘doppelgänger’; Schlegel, for whom, as for Coleridge, Shakespeare was a Proteus, and who wrote that dualism ‘is rooted so deeply in our consciousness that even when we are, or at least think ourselves, alone, we still ...”

“... else do you get a name like that?’ To us cocky British snobs who call the great man ‘Sir Peter Paul Rubens’ and don’t much mind what he called himself, the ‘mistake’ of the tourists is not tragical. But, for William Gaddis, this sort of ignorance leads up to the climax of The Recognitions, where his most admirable character – Stanley, the ...”

“... old film when Zhivago’s heart is described as ‘paper thin’. He thinks he sees Lara turning a corner in Moscow. He struggles to get off the bus, loosens his tie, finally makes it to the sidewalk where, after two steps, he drops dead. Dead chasing love, the thing we would die for. That was my father – stepping not off a bus but out of a shower in his ...”